Hi,
The Hebrew Wikipedia community is questioning the current design of the Mobile main page, and this raises some questions about the mobile main page design for all languages.
I don't have a strong opinion myself, but the current tendency is to show all the boxes rather than just a few, as it is now.
This begs the question - is it really good for mobile readers?
For example, is the mobile main page very popular at all, or is there much more traffic to the articles? Is there a difference between mobile main page traffic in the app and in the mobile web? Are there any known good practices for mobile main page design?
Finally, what is the plan for the future development of the main page? The current software still uses HTML ids like "mp-tfa"; is there a plan to change it?
Thanks!
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Hello!
I don't have a strong opinion myself, but the current tendency is to show all the boxes rather than just a few, as it is now.
First: Great idea to optimize the main page for mobile :) The normal
This begs the question - is it really good for mobile readers?
Just my personal point of view: The Main page is the page the users normally see the first time when navigating to Wikipedia. So, this page is the basis for the first feeling of the user, so why not give the "Boah!" feeling, or at least a "ok, looks good" on mobile as well as on desktop? Sure, much people navigating to Wikipedia through a search engine, but i think much people go to Wikipedia directly, too.
Is there a difference between mobile main page traffic in the app and in the mobile web?
Sorry, this i can't answer with measurment data, but i think the main page is more popular in the app, because you ever start with this page when you start the app (what is normal if you use the app instead of the browser, i think).
Are there any known good practices for mobile main page design?
Best practices and how to otimize the main page, you can find here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend#Configuring_the_main...
And (better) for Wikipedia administrators: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_Gateway/Mobile_homepage_formatting
I must say it: The Main page of my home wikipedia (german language) has a fully optimized Main page, maybe it helps you, to decide how to optimize your main page: Mobile Main Page Wikipedia Deutsch https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite Desktop Main Page Wikipedia Deutsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite
Finally, what is the plan for the future development of the main page? The current software still uses HTML ids like "mp-tfa"; is there a plan to change it?
That i can't answer :/ The plan is to go away from special handling the main page if i understand some comments right. But for the "master" plan i think some mobile team member can help you more :)
Hope that helps you!
Freundliche Grüße / Kind regards Florian
Von: mobile-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mobile-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von Amir E. Aharoni Gesendet: Freitag, 8. August 2014 02:07 An: mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: [WikimediaMobile] Main page - good practices, future plans
Hi, The Hebrew Wikipedia community is questioning the current design of the Mobile main page, and this raises some questions about the mobile main page design for all languages. I don't have a strong opinion myself, but the current tendency is to show all the boxes rather than just a few, as it is now.
This begs the question - is it really good for mobile readers? For example, is the mobile main page very popular at all, or is there much more traffic to the articles? Is there a difference between mobile main page traffic in the app and in the mobile web? Are there any known good practices for mobile main page design?
Finally, what is the plan for the future development of the main page? The current software still uses HTML ids like "mp-tfa"; is there a plan to change it?
Thanks!
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Actually there is no need to use mp- or any other type of prefix. Simply omit any of them to turn off main page special casing. It is totally optional.
Another trick - you can turn off main page special casing by adding useskin=Minerva to the url of the desktop site. A great way to prepare your main page for mobile without breaking anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main%20page?useskin=minerva&useformat=deskt...
For most main pages the most useful thing you can do towards this is kill your use of tables.
Personally I think the mobile main page should not hide any content. Hiding content is a hack and lazy.
Happy to help with any efforts to making main pages more user friendly. in past I have attempted but no one has seemed to care and taken any advice I've given them. :/ On 7 Aug 2014 17:07, "Amir E. Aharoni" amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Hi,
The Hebrew Wikipedia community is questioning the current design of the Mobile main page, and this raises some questions about the mobile main page design for all languages.
I don't have a strong opinion myself, but the current tendency is to show all the boxes rather than just a few, as it is now.
This begs the question - is it really good for mobile readers?
For example, is the mobile main page very popular at all, or is there much more traffic to the articles? Is there a difference between mobile main page traffic in the app and in the mobile web? Are there any known good practices for mobile main page design?
Finally, what is the plan for the future development of the main page? The current software still uses HTML ids like "mp-tfa"; is there a plan to change it?
Thanks!
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Some thoughts inline.
On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote: ...
I don't have a strong opinion myself, but the current tendency is to show all the boxes rather than just a few, as it is now.
This begs the question - is it really good for mobile readers?
Depending on user agent support for it, text-overflow adjusted with media queries for screen dimensions may be one way to tighten up stuff if screen real estate is the issue.
For example, is the mobile main page very popular at all, or is there much
more traffic to the articles?
I don't know about main page pageviews relative to total pageviews, as the formal definition of a pageview is I think being refined, but it looks like, for example, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page was accessed about 9.9 million times in the prior day's log. [1]
Is there a difference between mobile main page traffic in the app and in the mobile web?
Mobile web main page pageviews are proportionally larger than mobile app traffic from what I understand, and that seems to be the case at first glance. [2] In the Wikipedia for Android app, startup behavior is to go to the main page for the language of the user (first time use has an account splash screen). In the Wikipedia for iOS app the startup behavior (post-first time use account splash screen) is to go to the main page for the language of the user, and subsequent app launches go to the last reading location. The user can change the language from the in-app settings. Both the Android and iOS app now have a "Today" button in the navbar now (like the "Home" button on the mobile web), too, to get the user back to the main page in the current language.
Are there any known good practices for mobile main page design?
One is speed. Careful inlining of some ResourceLoader stuff and getting the additional *main page* <img> tags pointing at the same domain as the HTML of the main page might help.
-Adam
[1] $ zcat mobile-sampled-100.tsv.log-20140808.gz | cut -f9 | grep ' http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page' | sort | uniq -c Then multiply times 100 for the specific row.
[2] A hackish grep, with the result * 100 suggests about 394K Main Page loads, assuming I didn't mess up.
$ zcat mobile-sampled-100.tsv.log-20140808.gz | cut -f9,14 | grep WikipediaApp | grep 'wikipedia.org/w/api.php?' | grep 'page=Main+Page|Main%20Page' | grep -c 'sections=0'
...one other thing: looks like the main page pageviews on Hebrew mobile web Wikipedia is (assuming the correct URL) 18.8K in the previous day's log.
(Note 1% sampling here, so multiple times 100.)
$ zcat mobile-sampled-100.tsv.log-20140808.gz | cut -f9 | grep ' http://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93_%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D...' | sort | uniq -c 188 http://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93_%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D...
With a rsimplified definition of a pageview, that's maybe something like 3% of total pageviews on Hebrew mobile web Wikipedia.
$zcat mobile-sampled-100.tsv.log-20140808.gz | cut -f9,11 | grep ' http://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/' | cut -f2 | grep -i 'text|json' | grep -iv javascript | sort | uniq -c 4 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 80 text/html; charset=utf-8 5918 text/html; charset=UTF-8
-Adam
On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 12:09 PM, Adam Baso abaso@wikimedia.org wrote:
Some thoughts inline.
On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote: ...
I don't have a strong opinion myself, but the current tendency is to show all the boxes rather than just a few, as it is now.
This begs the question - is it really good for mobile readers?
Depending on user agent support for it, text-overflow adjusted with media queries for screen dimensions may be one way to tighten up stuff if screen real estate is the issue.
For example, is the mobile main page very popular at all, or is there much
more traffic to the articles?
I don't know about main page pageviews relative to total pageviews, as the formal definition of a pageview is I think being refined, but it looks like, for example, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page was accessed about 9.9 million times in the prior day's log. [1]
Is there a difference between mobile main page traffic in the app and in the mobile web?
Mobile web main page pageviews are proportionally larger than mobile app traffic from what I understand, and that seems to be the case at first glance. [2] In the Wikipedia for Android app, startup behavior is to go to the main page for the language of the user (first time use has an account splash screen). In the Wikipedia for iOS app the startup behavior (post-first time use account splash screen) is to go to the main page for the language of the user, and subsequent app launches go to the last reading location. The user can change the language from the in-app settings. Both the Android and iOS app now have a "Today" button in the navbar now (like the "Home" button on the mobile web), too, to get the user back to the main page in the current language.
Are there any known good practices for mobile main page design?
One is speed. Careful inlining of some ResourceLoader stuff and getting the additional *main page* <img> tags pointing at the same domain as the HTML of the main page might help.
-Adam
[1] $ zcat mobile-sampled-100.tsv.log-20140808.gz | cut -f9 | grep ' http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page' | sort | uniq -c Then multiply times 100 for the specific row.
[2] A hackish grep, with the result * 100 suggests about 394K Main Page loads, assuming I didn't mess up.
$ zcat mobile-sampled-100.tsv.log-20140808.gz | cut -f9,14 | grep WikipediaApp | grep 'wikipedia.org/w/api.php?' | grep 'page=Main+Page|Main%20Page' | grep -c 'sections=0'